


Radio Silence is Bliss

by AWRA



Series: Asymmetrical Bubbles [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: Altered Mental States, Attempt at Scientifically Accurate Fake Science, Body Horror, Denial, Dimension Travel, Gen, Multiverse, Post-Dark Side Of Dimensions, Quantum Cube, Science Fiction, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, aka seto's favorite activity asie from duel monsters, not really much but it's there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 07:26:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12031050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AWRA/pseuds/AWRA
Summary: Seto designed a perfect system using the Cube to take him to where Atem was. But one time the system malfunctions, and the travel ends midway. Seto is sure what he saw there was just hallucination, his brain acting up for the shock of the abrupt stop.Mokuba doesn't agree, but Seto insists he's alright.Everything is alright, as long as there is radio silence.





	Radio Silence is Bliss

**Author's Note:**

> am i dreaming or am i really posting a fic. it's been 85 years.  
> this is gonna be hopefully part of a series involving the presence of a multiverse, and the various ways in which it can traumatize people. a lot of this will be science babble, especially the second chapter of this fic. kinda the first time i write something like this, i hope it's come out good  
> have i forgotten how to do author notes too shit how long has it been since i posted

“-if anything, anything feels wrong when you come back, you need to go see a doctor immediately, no buts, Brother, you could-”

“I know” Seto said, making the final preparations.

“It's too dangerous.”

He looked up to the screen, finding his brother glaring at him. “I will be fine.”

Mokuba didn't look convinced. His eyes, hurt and angry at the same time, made a shadow of guilt creep in Seto's chest.

It wasn't that he liked making Mokuba worried. But Seto had to do this, he had things to discuss with Atem and he still hadn't had that win against him. And Mokuba would worry as long as he used the dimension crossing system.

Usually Seto felt that worry was excessive, as he had already made multiple trips and came back from each one of them without anything worse than an headache and the occasional bruised ego. Mokuba had become less concerned about the process, too.

But recently the whole space station had suffered a few malfunctions, due to some anomalous bursts of radiation, according to his technicians. All hardware and software had been checked thoroughly, but this system was the most complex and Seto had been warned they still weren't completely certain it was fixed.

But Seto had checked the system himself and hadn't found any anomaly. The concern was merely about the Cube possibly malfunctioning, which Seto found ridiculous. They still didn't know how the thing worked, but he doubted some Millenium Item would stop doing its job for any reason at all.

And when you don't have the data to know theoretically whether something should work or not, the only way to find out was to try to make that thing work. The entire system had been completely untested when Seto had first used it, after all, and it had worked magnificently.

This, compared to that time, held nearly no risk at all.

Mokuba hadn't been particularly reassured by that fact.

“If the control parameters act too strangely, you can pull me back before anything happens” Seto said, hoping Mokuba would feel better.

By his face, he didn't.

“Is everything ready?” Seto asked.

Mokuba grimaced, but nodded.

“Very well. I'm going.”

The travel began like it always did. He was launched down, gold light flashing around him, and once he crossed the portal he saw complete darkness, and the light breaking into fractals and swirling forms moving too fast for Seto to keep track of them.

He felt the Cube's energy envelop him, and resisted the urge to squirm as it seeped into him, an unpleasant, cold sensation. His skin tingled and itched annoyingly.

Then, the physical sensation of the pod around him disappeared, and his body became as if weightless, the Cube dragging every of the elemental particles in him to a different level of energy.

He expected the pull that he always felt, taking his body to Atem's palace.

But the pull came wrong. Something yanked him to his left, taking him by surprise. The darkness started spinning around him, and the neat golden fractals became irregular shapes. Seto opened his mouth in a silent and involuntary shout, falling straight through the lines of light and seeing it explode around him.

He hit a hard surface, and the momentum of the fall made him roll down a few times.

With a groan, he tried to push himself up. His head started spinning as soon as he did, and he fell down again, wincing as his shoulder hit the ground. He didn't know if physical injuries would carry over to his real body, but if they did he was gonna have some ugly bruises.

Rolling over on his back, he tried to understand what was going on.

The sky over him was dark, but he couldn't see any stars. He raised his hand in front of his face. He could see it clearly as day.

Squinting, he noticed the colors were off. His hand had a strange yellow hue, the dark particles leaving his body, his hourglass to how long left he had there, looked red instead of their usual purple. Even the sky above him was dark green.

Seto tried to sit up again. He put his hands down at his sides, bracing himself as the world began spinning again. . 

After a few seconds, he noticed the ground wasn't flat, but had a certain slope.

And the ringing in his ears wasn't in his ears, but came from all around him.

Looking around, he found that he was on what seemed like a bridge. It was wide enough for two cars to pass together comfortably, and had high walls on either side. It looked completely made of black stone.

This definitely wasn't Atem's palace. Seto couldn't remember ever seeing constructions like this there, and unless something had gone wrong with his eyes it was impossible for things to have those colors.

Could it be that the afterlife held places like this? Seto didn't think it was likely. 

Unless he had gotten stuck somewhere else. Somewhere in the middle, between him and his destination.

Seto had long since realized that the afterlife wasn't a parallel dimension in the strict sense. To get to the afterlife, the Cube shifted him to a different plane of reality, and then accelerated him to a speed higher than light to take him somewhere far, far away from Earth.

He didn't know how dead people's minds could cross that distance without some device akin to the Millenium Items to open a passage. Neither did he care much, he would worry about it when he died himself. 

But he knew that to reach that place he had to cross an enormous amount of space, more, he supposed, than the size of their Universe itself. Maybe the travel had ended too shortly, and he had landed on a planet he usually just passed by.

Lucky him for not ending up in the emptiness of space.

Seto didn't feel completely at ease. His scientists had procedures on how to forcefully pull him back from the afterlife if needed, but there was no guarantee they would work for wherever he was now.

He took a deep breath. Even if the scientists failed, his travel had a maximum fixed time of two hours, after which the Cube pulled him anyway. And that thing so far had proved to be reliable.

Rational thought didn't calm down his emotions like it usually did. The nervousness at the thought of possibly being stuck here for an indefinite amount of time was still there, and he was starting to get restless. He had to move, to do something to distract himself while he was there.

Or at least to shut off the noise filling the air around him. It was starting to annoy him.

Carefully, he stood up. Everything immediately started spinning around him, but he managed to stay upright long enough to find his balance.

He decided to go over to the side of the bridge. The wall was higher than he was, and even pushing himself up on the tip of his toes he couldn't see over it. He couldn't hear the sound of water, but he again he was having troubles hearing his own thoughts over this damned buzzing.

Placing his hand on the wall, he was surprised to find the stone was carved. The material was so dark he couldn't even see shadows, but with his hands he could make out many figures in high relief. He couldn't understand what they were, not with touch alone, but the wall was covered in them.

Seto looked around, trying to figure out where to go. To his left, the bridge continued for a couple hundreds meters or so, and Seto could make out what looked like a city at the end.

To his right, the bridge was tilted upwards, and Seto couldn't see past what he assumed was the top. Overall it looked like the structure was shaped like an arch, and Seto was well over halfway.

He decided to go to the city he saw. Maybe someone would be there to tell him where he was.

Strange no one else was on the bridge. With how big it was, it had been probably built to allow a great number of people to pass. Yet Seto was the only one there. Was the city going to be empty t-

Seto stopped. He swore he had walked less than a minute. Yet he was now almost at the end of the bridge. He hadn't been walking that fast.

He was starting to feel a little dizzy again. This wasn't good at all. And the sooner he managed to get away from that noise the better. It was driving him crazy.

There were two statues at the end of the bridge. They looked like they represented humans, but there was something wrong with them Seto couldn't quite put his finger on. The proportions didn't look exactly right. Or maybe the fact they were made of the same far too black stone, without shadows or lights, making them seem more like three dimensional holes than solid things.

Stepping past the statues, he walked towards the city in front of him. Two high buildings were at each side of the road he was walking on, like towers of guard, but the city didn't have any walls, just houses and smaller streets coming out of it.

He looked up at one of the towers, frowning. They had a strange shape. It almost looked like they were bending at an angle midway up, but that wasn't possible. 

He turned his eyes back down to what was in front of him. Headaches, dizziness, and now distorted sight. The Earth team would do better to pull him out quickly. Brain damage was one of the biggest risks, and he didn't want to risk that.

Trying to ignore what he was starting to recognize as fear, he followed the road past the towers and into the city. 

Every building around him was made of a strange combination of dark metal and greenish stone, bind together in a way Seto had never seen before. And they all looked wrong, stretched at some points, curve walls where straight ones should have been, doors and windows made in unusual shapes. 

He stumbled along, blinking and trying to straight his vision. The streets were made in black stone too, and Seto tried not to look down, the complete blackness making it look like he was walking on darkness, ready to give out under his feet and swallowing him completely.

Those ugly black statues kept popping up. In the middle of streets, at the corner of buildings. Gargoyles and decoration peppered the houses. The more Seto saw them the more disturbing they became.

And no one was around. Not a person in the whole city except from him.

He stumbled over a misplaced stone. He managed to brace himself against the closest building. His hand closed one of those black decorations, and he jerked it away. He didn't want to touch those things.

Some part of him told it was stupid, that it was just a strange rock. Yet he moved away, keeping himself pressed against the building, trying to put distance between himself and that statue.

How long did he have yet, before being brought back? If the scientists hadn't pulled him back by now, he had to wait until the time the Cube gave him ran out. So more than an hour, probably.

He leaned heavily against the wall. He didn't want to stay in this place for one hour more. Everything was wrong, from the colors to the buildings to the cursed buzzing that just wouldn't go away.

Perhaps it was that same buzzing or Seto's own hard breath that covered the sound of steps coming close to him. Only when he saw someone stopping in his peripheral vision did Seto raise his head.

Had he not felt as weak as he did, he would have ran.

There were two of them, standing in front of him. Taller than he was, they looked vaguely human, but their bodies were out of proportions, like the statues were. They stared at him with big, round eyes. Too big and too round for it to be normal.

But the thing that set Seto on edge the most was the skin of their face and of their bare arms. It looked like a misshapen glove. Of a sickly yellowish color, it was pulled too tight in certain places, almost looking ready to tear, while falling in lumps and folds in other areas.

“Good day, stranger” said one. Seto's eyes fixed on its mouth. The lips moved like those of a bad puppet.

Maybe they were some kind of machine made by the people of this city. Something that was meant to look human but failed. Damaged ones, perhaps. 

“Are you not feeling well?” the other asked. Its speech held a lilt that made it sound as if it was mocking Seto.

“I feel wonderful” Seto said.

“You don't look well. Maybe we could help you?” Seto watched with mounting nausea the skin of its cheek tensing and struggling not to rip as the thing spoke, pulled so thin one could see the movements of muscles and bone.

“What the fuck are you?” Seto asked. 

The things blinked at him. “People. Like you.”

The things were stepping closer to him. One raised its hand, like it wanted to touch him or grab him.

Seto pushed himself away. He walked backwards, still using the wall as a support. The things didn't say anything, just watched him. 

“Stay away from me” he said, trying to make it sound intimidating. 

The building ended and he pushed himself upright, trying to get as far as possible from there.

It would have been easier if only his legs would cooperate. His knees were weak, and he almost fell down with each step.

He would have run, but as it was he had to slow down and press himself against the buildings to stay upright.

His head lolled to one side and the other. 

From the direction he had come from - from where he supposed he had come from - two figures moved towards him, with legs bent in wrong ways.

Seto felt something close to panic rise. He moved again, trying to escape.

The building finished, leaving way to an alley. The road finished at the end of it.

Seto stumbled on in that direction. He didn't care where he would end up, it was enough to get out of that city with its bent buildings and black roads and freakish creatures and maddening noise.

What he found past the last buildings was an open space, nothing around except for the city behind him. He moved forward, almost grateful for the short orange grass under his feet. 

It was harder now that he didn't have anything to lean against, but he would crawl if it meant getting away from that place. 

The world seemed quieter. The buzzing was losing strength.

Before he could really comprehend that fact, a stream of black and red raised around him, and Seto felt his body dissolve, leaving this place to go back to his dimension.

He grunted as he was slammed back into the pod. His head was heavy, and he let it roll forward. He blinked sluggishly, disoriented, trying to make his senses work again.

Then, as if he had been dragged out of a bubble, every physical sensation assaulted him at once.

Seto let a small moan escape him as a burning pain filled his head. His whole body ached, and if he had eaten lunch that day he would have been throwing it up. A voice kept calling his name from the speakers, and after a moment he realized it was Mokuba's.

“I hear you” Seto grunted.

“Brother, are you ok? Are you with us now, where did you even end? Did something happen to you?”

Seto blinked. “I may need a check up.”

Mokuba stopped talking for a second. Then, “Are you hurt? Do we need to come directly up to the station?”

“No.” Seto pushed himself up, trying to get out of the pod. “I can come down myself.”

Getting to the elevator to leave proved to be a challenge. Everything was dancing in front of his eyes. He had to stop a few times to make sure he wouldn't fall down.

He slumped inside the elevator's chair. He refused to think of anything except keeping down the bile rising in his throat, the acceleration not doing him any favors.

Mokuba was waiting for him together with a team of paramedics once he arrived. Seto managed to walk somewhat in a straight line as they led him to the examination room, Mokuba holding tightly onto Seto's jacket.

The brain scan equipment was already prepared when he walked in. Unsurprising, and Seto allowed the procedure without complaint.

“Is everything normal, then?” he asked when everything was done, seeing the doctors stare at the readings.

“Not quite, sir. There structure of the brain seems fine, but we checked on its activity and it's over excited, it's like you are under the effect of a drug” one doctor answered.

“I'm not.”

“I know, sir. We might need to run more tests, see if there is any anomalous substance in your system, and we should repeat the scans later.”

“What might be the effects of this... excitement?” Seto asked.

The doctor looked uncomfortable. “I can't say for sure, but looking at the most affected areas I would say perhaps confusion, disorientation-”

“Hallucinations?” Seto blurted.

The doctor hesitated. “I wouldn't exclude that.”

“Are you having hallucinations, Seto?”

Seto looked at his brother. Mokuba was playing with a lock of his hair in a nervous way. “Not now, no.”

“Shall we proceed with-”

“I'm as fine as I can be. I will come back later to be scanned again, and you can get a blood sample to run tests on.”

“Seto.” Mokuba glared at him.

“My head is my only trouble right now” Seto said, giving his arm to the nurse coming with the needle. “I want to know what happened.”

Mokuba crossed his arms. “Your travel was stopped halfway. The system malfunctioned, as I told you it would, and as far as we can tell you ended up somewhere that is in between our dimension and the afterlife. We tried to pull you back for an hour and a half, but there was something messing with the readings and we weren't sure it could be done safely.”

One hour and a half? Seto had been sure it must have been no more than thirty, maybe forty minutes at most. It couldn't have been that long.

“What happened there, Seto?” Mokuba's tone was almost scared.

Seto's thoughts went back to huge eyes staring at him, and his stomach clenched, ghosts of emotions grabbing him, and he fought to keep them away.

None of that had been possible. It couldn't.

“I... hallucinated.”


End file.
